Modular and tuneable design space exploration in model-driven engineering of embedded systems
Time: Fri 2024-11-01 13.00
Location: Sal A, Kistagången 16, floor 2, Kista
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/61167004728
Language: English
Subject area: Electrical Engineering
Doctoral student: Rodolfo Jordao , Elektronik och inbyggda system, ForSyDe Group
Opponent: Associate Professor Marc Geilen, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Supervisor: Professor Ingo Sander, Elektronik och inbyggda system
The ITEA 3 project 2018-02228 PANORAMA was also a major funding source for this thesis.
QC 20241002
Abstract
The design of modern embedded systems is increasingly complex. Different applications must share a heterogeneous embedded platform while satisfying demanding design requirements. The financial cost and engineering effort to implement such modern embedded systems are proportional to this increasing complexity. Model-driven-engineering (MDE) approaches mitigate this complexity by using well-defined models as the central elements of the design process. Namely, these models can be used to automate design process activities, such as design space exploration (DSE).
This thesis brings two contributions within this context. First, a novel meta-modelling approach for MDE with its implementation ForSyDe IO. Second, the design space identification (DSI) approach with its implementation IDeSyDe. ForSyDe IO is a language-agnostic MDE framework that promotes cooperative development through its underlying common model and capabilities. IDeSyDe is a modular and tuneable MDE DSE framework that enables the composable construction of DSE solutions via DSI. Of greater practical value, DSI and its implementation IDeSyDe seamlessly combine different DSE solutions to improve the overall exploration performance.
To ensure these contributions have immediate practical value, this thesis also presents four different MDE DSE scenarios originating from industrial cooperation incorporated into IDeSyDe. The industrial cooperation includes periodic workloads from avionics and automotive contexts and digital signal processing applications from academic contexts. ForSyDe IO was used to express each case study’s applications, platforms and requirements, which shows how it can be incrementally adapted for different scenarios. At the same time, IDeSyDe is used to construct DSE solutions for each case study in a fashion that displays IDeSyDe’s modularity, tuneability and capabilityfor synergizing different DSE solutions.
The case studies show qualitatively how the contributions, DSI in particular, aid in providing a cooperative and modular environment for developing MDE DSE solutions. At the same time, the numeric results of case studies show quantitatively that the overhead of the DSI automated proceduresis negligible compared to the overall DSE process and that the transparent combination of explorers improves the overall exploration performance without additional development effort.